The meeting can be seen in its entirety below this story.
The court’s budget committee had distributed to each member a bound copy of the proposed 2025 budget prior to Thursday’s meeting, which began with County Clerk Karen Smith explaining changes that had been made to the budget compared with last year’s. “We took some money out of Other Miscellaneous to put it into Special Legal to where, if we need to hire an outside attorney, we can do that,” she said.
She also described a change that observes the federal requirement to allocate remaining ARPA funds to particular spending items by the end of this year. Much of the $85,387.62, she said would go “for unexpected repairs that we may be asked to pay at the hospital” with the rest helping to cover costs for volunteer fire departments and overtime among sheriff’s office personnel.
The county owns half of the real estate on which Southwest Regional Medical Center now sits and has invested $1 million into its operation, as did the city of Hope, while it transitions from being run by Steward Healthcare, which declared bankruptcy and sold the hospital’s operating license to Pafford Health System. The funds are necessary while the hospital waits to have its ability to charge Medicare/Medicaid and health insurances for its services restored.
Other changes to the 2025 County General’s budget compared with last year include the raising of funding for payroll in the sheriff’s office and the reduction of funding in a few line items to cover that. “We took $10,000 out of oil and glue, $10,000 out of parts and repairs, $5000 out of utility/electricity,” Smith said.
In the County Jail budget Smith described other cuts. “We took $10,000 out of small equipment, $5,000 out of oil and glue. Took $2.500 out of computer services, and then reduced other professional services by $5,000, and we took $10,000 out of electricity and utilities.”
As for the county’s performance in 2024 in staying within its budget, the Quorum Court budget committee head Ed Darling referred the quorum court members to the last pages of their bound copies. “It looks like versus the Fiscal Year 24 budget in county general, we're going to make budget,” she said.
“We will have a couple hundred-thousand-dollar surplus in County General. Every office except one is under budget on salaries and the sheriff's office is the only one that is one that went over salaries for the year, and we can make an adjustment for next year, and we'll probably have some other, some further discussions,” Darling added.
This year’s budget includes plans to purchase two patrol cars for the sheriff’s department as well as the replacement of expired equipment. These will likely be discussed in future quorum court meetings, Darling said. He also noted that the county’s solid waste department was under its budget. Concerning the county jail, Darling said it costs about $5,800 a day to operate “and we're going to strive real hard to keep it there next year.”
Darling also said the 2025 county budget grants a 3 percent salary increase to all employees. Time clocks will be installed this year in the county courthouse for greater efficiency in keeping up with and calculating hours earned. “It will make the [elected] officers a whole lot happier,” he said. The cost for the time clocks will be about $800, he said.
Smith read the ordinance for the 2025 budget and by individual voice vote each quorum court member in attendance (only Cherry Stewart and Doris Brown were not present) voted yes. The ordinance passed.
District prosecutor Ben Hale, acting as County Attorney, gave the news that the winning bid to perform roof work on the old county courthouse using about $264,000 in funds granted by the state had come in within the budget set by the grant. As work begins, County Judge Jerry Crane will watch expenses to make sure it does not exceed the amount of the grant.
The meeting was the last of District 5 JP Scott Gunter’s term. His replacement, Republican Victor Ford, who ran unopposed in the November general election, will be sworn in January 1st.